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say it: fawr-MAY-shuhn
formation is a noun meaning "an arrangement of people or things acting as a unit". It carries 7 recorded senses.
an arrangement of people or things acting as a unit
“a defensive formation”
“a formation of planes”
the act of fabricating something in a particular shape
the act of forming or establishing something
“the constitution of a PTA group last year”
“it was the establishment of his reputation”
“he still remembers the organization of the club”
natural process that causes something to form
“the formation of gas in the intestine”
“the formation of crystals”
“the formation of pseudopods”
creation by mental activity
“the formation of sentences”
“the formation of memories”
Forms marked · are formed by the regular rule rather than recorded in the source data. English keeps a few hundred irregulars and the rest follow the pattern, so the rule is right far more often than not — but it is a rule, and the mark says so.
Definitions, synonyms and semantic relations for formation come from Princeton University’s WordNet. The pronunciation comes from the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. Commonness is measured against a corpus of everyday English. Full sources and licences.